Telescopic instruments and light sources have become essential for magnifying and illuminating a work area during delicate surgery, dental work, inspection of circuit board solder joints, assembly of miniature parts, and so forth. A typical telescopic instrument may include a high-intensity illuminator and/or a pair of telescopic loupes which are adjustably mounted to an eyeglass frame or headband. Such optical instrumentation provides a user (a surgeon or dentist for example) with a magnified image of the work area with a field of view at about an arm's length.
Available mounting assemblies of this type provide a wide range of adjustments, as evidenced in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,263, entitled FIVE-DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM OCULAR MOUNTING ASSEMBLY. As the name implies, this patent discloses a highly versatile telescopic ocular mounting assembly, which may include an express flip-up capability. This enables a wearer to rapidly place the oculars into, and out of, the field of view. As with most arrangements of this type, however, it is quite often the case that other, vision-related accessories are to be used in conjunction with the telescopic devices. As one example, light sources are often used alone or collaboratively with magnification devices to illuminate the field of view, thereby enhancing visibility.
Heretofore, however, such accessories have been mounted separately from the eyeglass frames, resulting in separate pieces of instrumentation applied in an uncoordinated manner. There is a need, therefore, for an integrated vision assistance arrangement which preferably provides mounting capabilities for various accessories, such as illumination sources, while retaining an ocular flip-up capability and distributing weight more evenly to enhance user comfort.